


The Petrifying Peril of Professor Kubik, The Ghastly Geometer!

by Justice_Turtle (Curuchamion)



Category: The Flash (Comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curuchamion/pseuds/Justice_Turtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt at filling the prompt "something that feels like a Silver Age adventure". Or a snippet of a Silver Age adventure, anyway. I hope I've captured the gleefully science-obsessed absurdity of these old comics fairly well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Petrifying Peril of Professor Kubik, The Ghastly Geometer!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LemuelCork](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemuelCork/gifts).



> I had this villain idea hanging around in my head, so when I saw this prompt go by on the pinch-hits list I just had to give it a shot. I don't seem able to hit 1000 words this year, but I hope you like the story anyway! :-)

"So, Professor Kubik, you call yourself the Geometer now?" Barry Allen asked, trying to make light conversation. He leaned one red-gloved hand casually against the glass wall of his prison. With luck, the professor wouldn't realize what he was trying to do.

"Indeed!" shouted the neophyte supervillain. Barry suspected he meant to boom menacingly, or declaim with sinister emphasis, or something of the sort - but his thin, hoarse voice kept breaking halfway and spoiling the effect. "As you see, I have trapped you in a _geodesic dome_ formed entirely from _triangles_ of _unbreakable glass!!!_ Now you cannot keep me from _destroying_ Central City!!! The bombardment with perfectly _spherical_ balloons of carbon dioxide gas will begin at _noon precisely!!!_ "

Barry wasn't especially worried about the bombardment. As a chemist, he knew that carbon dioxide gas could theoretically flood low-lying areas and drive out the oxygen, suffocating anyone caught in it, but he also knew that Central City - located as it was in the Plains States - was too flat and too windy for any dangerous concentration of the gas to build up, except possibly in the sewers, where it might suffocate rats and put out any hypothetical fires.

He was more concerned about the Professor. Kubik was a reputable member of society, a faculty member at Central City University; true, he was a professor of geometry, but it didn't make sense that a simple coincidence of name and profession should drive anyone to a life of crime. Barry didn't believe, for instance, that if his fiancée Iris West had happened to take up cartography she would inevitably have begun trying to kill people with deadly mazes while wearing a map-emblazoned costume.

No, it was most likely that someone had brainwashed Professor Kubik into supervillainy, hoping to keep the Flash - otherwise known as Barry Allen - imprisoned long enough to do something far more dastardly than bombard Central City with carbon-dioxide balloons. What that something was, Barry didn't know yet, but he intended to find out.

Just as soon as he got out of this glass prison. Thankfully, that wouldn't be too hard; his power of super-speed enabled him to match the oscillation rate of the atoms in any material, essentially letting him become part of the glass himself, once he found the right speed to vibrate.

"I'm sorry, Professor, but I can't let you do that," Barry said, and walked through the wall.


End file.
